


The Exquisite Beauty of Pain

by skadoo



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Letter to Kathryn, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skadoo/pseuds/skadoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What was going through Tessa's mind in the days before she helped Chakotay and Harry restore the Timeline? A prelude to the episode Timeless in Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Exquisite Beauty of Pain

**Disclaimer:** I don't own 'em and to my everlasting sorrow, never will.

 **Rating:** K+

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 **AN:** Thank you to Mrs. Singing Violin for her duties as Beta. So, if you find mistakes they're entirely my fault.

* * *

I thought of you as my Nemesis for years. But I was wrong: the battle for his heart was fought long ago, and a victor declared long before I entered the fray. I couldn't understand that there was no hope of winning anything. I didn't know it then, but I know it now. I fell in love with the exquisite beauty of pain, his immense pain in losing you.

I started helping him not because I'm selfless and noble and good but because I thought it would be the easiest way to help him see that what he was doing was more than futile. I wanted to convince him that he needed to live in the here and the now and not in his memories- in the what if, that could never be. To my horror, what I discovered was that he couldn't possibly live when inside he was empty, a mere husk. What I had before me was a man who, while he appeared to breathe, eat, and sleep like other men do, was essentially a dead man walking. I never, ever, had a chance.

I nearly laughed that day when I realized I, too, along with Harry and him, had fallen into your intricate web, the web of the exalted Kathryn Janeway. What kind of woman are you when the brilliance that is your life can still reverberate fifteen years after your death? I stopped hating you when I realized that almost everything about the man I was in love with was magnified because of his love for you, his crew, and _Voyager._

When you love someone, you want them to have their heart's desire, and his heart desires yours with all his soul. I can send him back to you only because he was never really mine and I have finally come to terms with it. He has no inkling that I know-no idea that, to me, he is a transparent ghost. Harry tells me that the two of you chose to sublimate your feelings even though everyone already knew your secret. Ironically, it was by not fanning those flames that they burst into brilliance.

I can only hope that you and he will find each other again…maybe not right away, but _Voyager_ will get home. I must help him as well as Harry. I can take whatever risks are necessary, because without him, I am a shadow of myself.


End file.
